Non-gay bro thread a.k.a. Random offtopic stuff.

[DE4life]

Yeah I think gaming has moved on from just being "casual" and "hardcore", there's a lot in between now.

 

[miniroch]

It's like you said about yourself, you want fun and relax, then to me that's a casual gamer, basically like watching TV but playing a game. Nothing wrong with that at all. When I feel that way rarely, I'll throw in some Witcher 3 at times. But mostly for me it's serious gaming or not game at all. If I don't want to play serious then I most likely just watch some shows or surf the web rather than playing something more laid-back. It's just my personality.

From what you're saying, your definition is plain wrong and should be updated.

You can be a hardcore book reader, what do you do? Read books.
Hardcore TV series fan, what do you do? Watch TV series.
If you're a hardcore bicycle rider, you probably ride bicycle a lot.

And then there is an elitist hardcore gamer, who has to compete online (in a super narrow amount of games, since you know, most games are offline and then amongst those online are elite - selected for today's e-sport). It's straight bullshit. Your hardcore gamer term is nothing other than either amateur or pro e-sport player. Think of all those who were there when it all started, how can you take that away from people who never got into online, but spent thousands of hours in single player games?
I won first league in FIFA 18 couple of times, since it's only game I used to play online for a while, but you think I might be a casual, just because I prefer to know what happened with Ethan Carther?
Hell, I graduated as video game developer, I guess that pretty much tells how different gamer I am from girls playing Sims and folks playing FIFA once in a while.

Not playing online is nowhere close to "not playing serious". I'm dead serious saving Ciri. I'm just not serious killing folks over and over again in CoD, because it's repetitive.

The best term from urban dictionary:
"Hardcore gamers put good gameplay above all else, and don't mind if a good game has poor (or even nonexistent) graphics, sound, characters and plot. "
This is probably the best you'll get in terms of a true hardcore gamer. It's just a game lover, not some kind of elitist guy who mastered couple of online games. Quite opposite to world of online games, the entire gaming world is a big one. Too big for any of e-sport players to steal the "hardcore gamer" term. You don't need to know Fortnite characters, but you do need to know Blazkowicz.

@eochaid - I also get piracy, but Assassin's Creed is a good product - especially part 2 + Brotherhood + Revelations, fantastic trilogy. Also IV and Origins were really nice. Most of the unfinished product are online related, as is Anthem, The Division, Destiny, which are good to play after a year or so. Ubisoft is a fine company who gave us really good games and I don't understand all the hate towards them. They sometimes made terribly bad decisions about their anti-theft policy, but some of the franchises we had from them are fantastic, i.e. Far Cry, Splinter Cell, Beyond Good & Evil. Much better than EA and Activision.

 

[krofius]

To me a casual gamer is one that plays from time to time. If you spent hours playing in a single playet game then there's no way that you might be called casual. I know people that spends 5-6 hours a day doing this. And they buy almost everything that's relrased.

There's this guy that ended dark souks without receiving one single hit. There's no way to call him casual.

And there are ais and ais. Many are easy to deffeat but there are others hard as guck. Just the same as playing against other people.

Yeah I know him, TheHappyHob I think? He did the Dark Souls trilogy no hit run, and he's trying to do the ''God run'' at the moment which is Dark Souls trilogy, Demon Souls and Bloodborne. Definitely not a casual gamer obviously.
I'm not saying you can't be a hardcore gamer playing vs AI's I'm just saying on average most casual gamers don't play online.

I understand the piracy thing. When, instead of a full game, they sell an incomplete one with four dlcs and you end up paying 100€ or even more it's natural to not want to pay for this.

This is why I won't buy or play ganes like assassins creed. I feel it's a fraud.

But well developed full games, I will always buy them.

Yeah it's a sad state of the industry, all games are releasing ''early access'' which is just bullshit because developers can just keep blaming problems on ''early acces'' all the time. On top of that you have microtransactions ruling the entire market too. Personally I think it's fine though cause it's mostly cosmetic skins for weapons/characters you buy but all that DLC stuff you talk about is really true. I know that with Witcher 3 they released DLC's that was more content than like a regular game so it was definitely worth. But you have games who just milk money with DLC, I don't like it. Then again I don't really play the type of games that has DLC in it, but I understand the problem.

From what you're saying, your definition is plain wrong and should be updated.

I obviously disagree with you and that's fine for me, I respect your opinion.

 

[miniroch]

It's not really about my opinion, but so much more about press usage of the term along with with how broad it is compared to what you suggest.
https://quanticfoundry.com/2018/08/01/casual-hardcore
You can't simply narrow it down to skill, because this term is reserved for pro gamers, while online competitors are esport players.

You don't even need to like playing games to be a good esport player, how would that work for hardcore gamer?

 

[krofius]

That's what I mean, the term gamer has been diluted so there's no point in discussing it really, it doesn't mean the same thing today that it did years ago because they are trying to broaden and make it overly inclusive for people, just like the term nerd. I also have a hard time putting exactly what I mean into words that make perfect sense, so I'll end the discussion about it.

 

[eochaid]

- I also get piracy, but Assassin's Creed is a good product - especially part 2 + Brotherhood + Revelations, fantastic trilogy. Also IV and Origins were really nice. Most of the unfinished product are online

It must be. But my point is that they're selling incomplete games on purpose just to make money.

 

[miniroch]

I wouldn't say so. Perhaps The Division, I don't know is it same with sequel, maybe For Honor. In comparison to what they developed other than that it's like 1 occurrence in 10 games. Since you play Skyrim you ought to know dlcs started with Oblivion's skin horse. Bethesda is so much worse in terms of incomplete games...

 

[eochaid]

Incomplete and incompetent.

 

[DE4life]

It must be. But my point is that they're selling incomplete games on purpose just to make money.

Pretty common these days, especially now that they can release patches online. Back in the day (up until PS2 era) the game had to be as complete as possible when released, because that was the final version of the game no matter what. Now developers can continue working on the game even after it's released - almost every game has a "day 1 patch" and a bunch more that come afterwards. That's why I tend to wait before buying a game, as chances are it'll be a month before it's patched to being somewhat complete.

 

[eochaid]

I wait until there's a good bundle. Just see how much the witcher costs now with its dlcs. That's the best option.

 

[miniroch]

Pretty common these days, especially now that they can release patches online. Back in the day (up until PS2 era) the game had to be as complete as possible when released, because that was the final version of the game no matter what. Now developers can continue working on the game even after it's released - almost every game has a "day 1 patch" and a bunch more that come afterwards. That's why I tend to wait before buying a game, as chances are it'll be a month before it's patched to being somewhat complete.

Reasonable approach, but what usually makes game complete is DLC, not patches. The latter are mostly focused on bugfixing or adding small features/changes, while DLC usually feel like the missing part of the game (Mass Effect add-ons, Mortal Kombat character packs)...

But before judging you need to understand the gamedev part of it, where DLC is kind of an answer to growing costs of creating AAA games and a better option than microtransactions. If DLC is not straight cut from the supposed-to-be-final version, but done tastefully, like Witcher 3 or Spiderman, it is absolutely fine and I'm more than willing to pay. I don't recall Ubisoft doing this, it's more of Activision/EA thing.

 

[eochaid]

You're right. Ubisoft doesn't patch. They just wait for fans to do this.

 

[DE4life]

Reasonable approach, but what usually makes game complete is DLC, not patches. The latter are mostly focused on bugfixing or adding small features/changes, while DLC usually feel like the missing part of the game (Mass Effect add-ons, Mortal Kombat character packs)...

But before judging you need to understand the gamedev part of it, where DLC is kind of an answer to growing costs of creating AAA games and a better option than microtransactions. If DLC is not straight cut from the supposed-to-be-final version, but done tastefully, like Witcher 3 or Spiderman, it is absolutely fine and I'm more than willing to pay. I don't recall Ubisoft doing this, it's more of Activision/EA thing.

When done right it's fine. This is something that has been going on for a while anyway.

Personally, one of the most frustrating examples of this being done badly is Football Manager. For over a decade the product has been repeatedly released half-finished with a large amount of game breaking bugs, all because the developer has to meet the specific deadline of October/November. It can be March or April before the final patch is released (with interim patches being released during that period), and every time a patch is released it significantly changes how the game is played. Suddenly I'll find tactics that I was using pre-patch are suddenly useless and I'm basically starting from scratch trying to find one that actually works with the 'new' patch, all because the game was rushed to market.

So now I only ever buy this game during December/January, and I usually skip entire iterations (I got FM18 last year, having been playing FM15 for the previous three years). So not only do I just slip entire versions of the game but I also tend to buy when it's at a reduced price. All because the game is never even close to finished at release.

 

[eochaid]

Thoughts on the new google service?

 

[DE4life]

I'm not sure streaming has come far enough for this kind of thing to be successful yet. If anyone can put the resources behind it to make it successful it's Google, but then there was Google Plus, Google Glass and Google Wave, so... we'll see.

 

[eochaid]

They say that you won't need hardware...

 

[DE4life]

The biggest issue for streaming only services has been lag. If they can eliminate that then they might be on to a winner.

Also requires you to have a pretty high speed & reliable internet connection, which in the UK at least is definitely not a given. It would be kind of shit to have your entire video game system taken out because your internet is down.

 

[miniroch]

Yesterday they said it's 30 Mbps for 4K, so the requirements are not really big. Question is, how they are planning on eliminating input lag. As for Google, https://killedbygoogle.com/ is probably the answer to all your questions.

It is the future nevertheless, since Microsoft and Sony are going the same path, along with suspicions of Apple trying to get a piece of this cake. MS has a big advantage with Azure being used for quite a while, so my guess is their infrastructure regarding cloud services is best at the moment.
My biggest worry is about pricing (monthly payment or pay per hour?), old games maintenance and indie developers - how much they will have to pay for their game to be included?
If cloud eventually will take over gaming industry, which probably is happening, either they get a good enough deal or the indie game market is in trouble.

 

[DE4life]

A lot of Households in the UK barely get 17 MBPS let alone 30. I'm on 100 but that's more good fortune than anything else.

 

[eochaid]

I have 300 download and 30 upload. But still will depend on the number of devices using the net at the same time, your router, if the device is wireless, the network card of the device and many other things.

It's as when they say 120 fps and 8k. Ok. Would I be able to play this in my 720 p tv or should I need to buy a new one? Meaning around 1200€. And the same goes for the computer. Unless they're connected to an online gpu.